OnlineRealEstateSuccess.com

Internet Marketing for Real Estate Professionals

Monday, January 14, 2008

5 Different Ways to Use Your Domain Name in Google Ads

Have you ever tried to change how your domain name is displayed in your ads? Hopefully you have tested out different methods and different display types with your domain name in your Google Pay Per Click ads. A better question might be why even try? The main reason you try different ads is to appeal to different people and see which one tests better giving you the best results. I thought today we would go over different ways to use your domain name in your Google Adwords Ads. Remember you 35 characters for display.

5 Different Ways to Display Your Domain Name

www.LovelySantaMonicaCondos.com - Try capitalizing the different words in your domain name and see what effect that has. This happens to be our favorite.
www.lovelysantamonicacondos.com - all lower case may appeal to some as well so it is good to try it in different ways.
LovelySantaMonicaCondos.com - remove the www. It is not required for Google to have it and if someone typed in your address without the www most web browsers resolve this automatically.
LovelySantaMonicaCondos.com/BuyNow - use a word or phrase after the slash. You don't have to have the directory on your website but it will attract the potential visitors attention.
www.lovelySantaMonicacondos.com - capitalizing just the city that you work in is also a great way to attract the users attention.

I always recommend testing two different displays of the same domain name or URL when you are running ads. If you have a greater CTR(Click Through Rate) when you have a different display format of your domain name then you have a winner on your hands! Good luck and enjoy success online.

Labels: google pay per click, pay per click

# posted by Joseph Bridges @ 9:00 AM 0 Comments

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

Right Keywords Increases Ad Performance

When we are setting up a new Google Adwords campaign it is important to be as specific as possible with the ad and the keywords that you select. We found that some of the biggest frustrations with Google Adwords is what words should people select to advertise on and then once they have those words what ad should they put with those words.

So we have the two problems:

Word Choice
Ad matching those words

Let's keep this as simple as possible. Sometimes it is easier to write the ad before the keyword selection. You can always write the ad and then modify the key words.

Lets look at the ad that above. The ad is for Spring Valley Homes. Now The web address has CA in it so it is the Spring Valley in California and not the one in Indiana.

Ad Matching those keywords

When we hit a wall with keywords selection we will write an ad first and then find the words that will go along with that ad. In the example above we have an ad for Spring Valley Homes. It is simple and to the point.

Word Choice

This is usually the harder part of the equation. So in our ad example above we mention Spring Valley Homes. A few rules for adding keywords to an adgroup are that you don't want more than 30 keywords. This actually makes it easier because the ad will match better to a smaller set of words.

A sample word list for the ad above would be as follows:

Spring Valley Home Sales
"Spring Valley Home Sales"
[Spring Valley Home Sales]
Spring Valley home sale
[Spring Valley home sale]
Home Spring Valley sale
Sale Spring Valley Home
Spring Valley CA Home
[Spring Valley CA Home]
Spring Valley CA Home Sale

For why we use brackets or quotes see the post on match types. As you can see above the variances in the keywords for that ad are small. You are always better off having less keywords in an adgroup than more as it will increase performance of your ad because the ad will be more specific.

We hope this helps you focus your ads and your keywords and remember to take it step by step to make things easier. Implementing the strategies above helped many of our ads increase conversion by over 10% and increase Click Through Rate 30%.

Labels: Google Adwords, google pay per click

# posted by Joseph Bridges @ 9:18 AM 0 Comments

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

4 Reasons Not to Point Google Ads to Your Home Page

One of the things that can frustrate anyone who uses Google AdWords is not seeing results. Now one of the surest ways to make sure you don't get the results you desire is to drive all visitors from Your Google AdWords Campaign to your home page. There are reasons for this so we will go over our

Top 4 Reasons Not to Point Your Ads to Your Home Page

They are looking for something specific - this is the best reason not to point an ad to your home page. A user who clicks your ad has something very specific in mind. Your home page is general. Give them what they want.
It will take more visitors to get the same results - If you weren't paying for each and every visitor this may not be a big deal but you are. So if you have to pay for 10 times as many visitors to get the same results then you are just wasting money.
It is not how Google Recommends you to do it - Now Google even tells you in various tutorials that you want to make your ads specific and make sure they match up to your landing page or destination page. Ensuring that you follow a winning formula is a great way to ensure success.
Your Visitor wasn't trying to get to your home page - often times the home page is a great place to start for a user who finds you organically because it provides an array of choices to start their visit but the visitor wasn't trying to get to a general page.

Remember you want your ads to go to pages that match up to exactly what the user was looking for. In a perfect world each ad would go to it's own page and that would be exactly what the user was looking for. Since we don't have the time for perfection we want to strive toward it and make sure that each ad goes to a page within the website that matches to that ad. If you don't have a page that matches the ad you may want to ad a page. Good luck with Google. For more information on how to improve your ads check out our 5 Tips to Improve Ad Performance Guide.

Labels: Google Adwords, google pay per click, pay per click

# posted by Joseph Bridges @ 8:50 AM 0 Comments

Wednesday, November 7, 2007

4 Reasons to use Google Conversion code

Google Adwords is a great program to get traffic to your website instantly. In fact it is the quickest way that you can get visitors to your website.

Now having people visit your real estate website is great but having them convert to buyer leads or selling leads is better. So how can you tell if people converted to leads? Well you use Google's conversion tracking code that's how. Don't be afraid if you aren't a technical wizard. Thanks to Google you don't have to be. So let's go over 4 Great Reasons to Use Google Conversion Code.

1. It is easy to implment the code - Google gives you the code necessary in order to track how many people converted to a lead from your paid ad.
You will know the cost of your leads - nothing helps you determine if your money is being well spent wisely than knowing what you are getting for your dollars.
You have something to judge success on - You want a conversion rate of at least 5% on all of your landing pages. Some of our landing pages have conversion rates as high as 36%.
Google gives you tutorials - if you want to put this code in yourself google offers multiple tutorials in both print and in video format that make it easy to get going.

So get that code added today so you can begin to have the kind of success you want out of your Google Ad campaigns. The picture above shows where you need to go in your Google Adwords account to get things started.

Labels: Google Adwords, google pay per click

# posted by Joseph Bridges @ 9:07 AM 0 Comments

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Click Through Rate - Make Sure You Check Your Cost

With all of the great tools that Google has to report to you what is going on with your ads, campaigns, and keywords it is quite easy to get soley focused on a few stats and the one that is, in my opinion, the easiest to get focused on is CTR or Click Through Rate. Now obviously this is a very important part of the Google formula. Google uses CTR to judge how effective your ad is and by that where you will place combined with your bid amount. That is not the point of this post however. Today I want to make sure you focus on your cost per conversion. This is how much you are paying to get a lead or to get a purchase. In real estate you are paying for a chance to help someone with real estate information.

So the cost you pay is very important. We find that at least 1 out of every 10 leads that we receive is ready to meet with us today. Now of course we have to ask them to meet with us but we find this to be true time and time again over the number of leads our team generates every month. Keeping an eye on the cost is key. We of course always want the lowest cost per lead possible and are always looking at our ads to drive the cost down. Currently our cost is just slightly over $10.32 per lead for our condo website. The average commission on condos we sell, we focus on the entry level, is $7,950. We know that it will take at least 10 leads or $103.20 to get 1 solid buying appointment and 25% of the time that person will buy within the next 90 days. So we pay $412.00 for each closed sale or a 19.29 times our money in return. That that is just within 90 days as we know that another 25% of those will also buy within 12 months and we just have to follow-up with them.

So with all of these numbers you want to focus on your ads and your cost per lead. Make sure that you use Googles conversion code in your website. Have your webmaster put it in for you so you can judge the ultimate success of your landing pages.

Labels: google pay per click, landing page, PPC Campaigns, real estate pay per click

# posted by Joseph Bridges @ 8:39 AM 0 Comments

Monday, September 10, 2007

Avoid the Google Content Network - At least at first

I find that when everyone gets started on Google and advertising with Google PPC (Pay Per Click) they either leave all the check boxes checked or start checking as many boxes as possible. This can make your first campaigns not as effective and can make them very costly to you. I want to make sure that you avoid the hard times of advertising on Google and make sure that you get the results that you desire. One setting that I encourage people (read into that tell them) to turn off when they get started is advertising on the Google Content Network.

The settings by default encourage you to advertise on the content network. Now don't get me wrong there is nothing wrong with the Google content network it is just a different kind of ad that you would want to run on it.

Think of it this way. The Google Content network is literally thousands upon thousands of websites that run Google Ads. So a user may be reading an article on say the New York times on real estate and they might also see an ad for real estate. So this potential buyer is not looking for real estate info exactly they are reading an article. Your ad would have to make them not want to read the article anymore and visit your website or page instead. This is possible and there can be great traffic to be found on the content network but you shouldn't start there. You should start with only Google Search and I like the Search Network as well. That means your ads will be shown when someone is searching Google or one of their affiliate search engines. These are potential buyers that are seeking information out and these are the ones that you want to attract first as they already show a willingness to look for your information.

So when you are just getting your first Google PPC (Pay Per Click) campaigns started start with just Google and their search partners and stay of the content network until you determine how things are working. Good luck!

Labels: Google, Google Adwords, google analytics, google pay per click, Google Webmaster Tools, pay per click, real estate pay per click

# posted by Joseph Bridges @ 9:39 AM 1 Comments

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